5.  The applicant, Behice Alkın, is a Turkish national who was born in 1985 and lives in Şırnak. At the time of the events she was eleven years old and lived in Ortabağ village, which is located within the administrative province of Şırnak.
6.  The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties and as they appear from the documents submitted by them, may be summarised as follows.
7.  On 13 May 1996 the applicant – who was 11 years old at the time – was playing with other children in the meadows near her village when she stepped on a landmine. According to a document drawn up by the soldiers, a few minutes prior to the events a gendarme soldier from the nearby Ortabağ gendarmerie station had told the children to leave the area, and the applicant had stepped on the mine as she was leaving the area.
8.  She was airlifted to Şırnak Military Hospital in a military helicopter and subsequently to Diyarbakır Military Hospital. According to a medical report prepared by Diyarbakır Military Hospital on 22 August 1996, the applicant's left leg was amputated from the knee. As the family lacked the necessary funds, the social services provided the applicant with a prosthetic leg.
9.  The applicant's father made a statement to the gendarmerie on 19 May 1996 and stated that the incident had been an accident and that he did not want to press charges against anyone. In her statement of 4 June 1996 the applicant also stated that she did not want bring any complaints in connection with the incident, which had been an accident.
10.  On an unspecified date the public prosecutor's office in the nearby town of Uludere initiated an investigation of its own motion into the circumstances of the incident. On 27 June 1996 the file was transferred to the Uludere district administrative council for the necessary authorisation to continue with the investigation.
11.  On 14 August 1997 the Uludere district administrative council declined the authorisation sought by the prosecutor. It found that, despite the soldier's warning, the applicant had crossed the minefield and that therefore there had been no intention or fault on the part of the soldiers.
12.  On 4 December 1997 the Diyarbakır Regional Administrative Court examined, of its own motion, the decision of the Uludere District Administrative Court and upheld it.
13.  According to the applicant, neither the decision of 14 August 1997 nor the judgment of 4 December 1997 was communicated to her or her family and they only became aware of these decisions in 2004.
14.  On 26 March 1997 the applicant's parents, acting as her legal guardians, filed a petition with the Ministry of the Interior (hereinafter “the Ministry”) requesting compensation for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage on account of the injury sustained by the applicant. On 5 June 1997 the Ministry informed them that they would not pay her compensation in the absence of a judicial decision.
15.  On 16 June 1997 the lawyer representing the applicant's parents (“the family”) filed an action for compensation against the Ministry before the Diyarbakır Administrative Court. In their petition, the family claimed that the State had been responsible for the injury sustained by the applicant. In any event, in accordance with the case-law of the Supreme Administrative Court, the State should bear responsibility for her injury in accordance with the “social risk principle” even if no fault was established on the part of the Ministry. They requested the court to award them 6,000,000,000 Turkish liras (TRL) for pecuniary damage and TRL 1,000,000,000 for non‑pecuniary damage.
16.  The Ministry and the family submitted their observations on the merits of the case on 13 August and 15 September 1997 respectively. In 1998 and 1999 the Administrative Court was provided with the criminal investigation file.
17.  On 26 April 2000, with the assistance of their lawyer, the family sent a letter to the Diyarbakır Administrative Court complaining about that court's failure to make any progress in its examination of the case in the previous three years. They drew the Administrative Court's attention to the financial problems they had been experiencing and stated that the court fees they had to pay had exacerbated those problems. They asked the court to expedite the proceedings.
18.  On 27 April 2000 the Diyarbakır Administrative Court appointed an expert to calculate the amount of pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant. The expert submitted his report to the court on 17 October 2000. According to the report, the pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant amounted to TRL 13,522,992,551.
19.  On 21 December 2000 the Diyarbakır Administrative Court awarded the family the totality of the sum requested by them. In its decision the Administrative Court held that the injury to the applicant had been caused as a result of the explosion of a landmine which had been laid by the security forces and, as such, the State had to compensate her for the damage sustained by her. The Administrative Court based its decision on the doctrine of “social risk”, which did not require the establishment of any causal link between the wrongful act and the damage, and considered that the burden of the damage caused in the fight against terrorism should be shared by society as a whole in accordance with the principles of “justice” and “the social State”.
20.  The Ministry appealed against the decision on 2 May 2001.
21.  The applicant applied to the office responsible for the execution of judgments and successfully requested an order for payment of the compensation to be issued against the Ministry. When the Ministry failed to comply with a payment order issued on 21 June 2001 and failed to ask for additional time, the office responsible for the execution of judgments called on the Ministry on 6 June 2002 to comply with the order.
22.  On 25 February 2003 the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the appeal lodged by the Ministry. It considered that, although there was a causal link between the laying of the landmines by the soldiers and the damage caused to the applicant, the authorities had not been at fault. As such, the awarding of damages by the Administrative Court on the basis of the “social risk principle” had been the right course of action. The Supreme Administrative Court's decision was served on the Ministry on 11 June 2003.
23.  On 1 July 2003 the Ministry paid the applicant the sum of TRL 27,330,800,000 (approximately 17,000 euros (EUR) at the time).
24.  The authorities subsequently informed the Ministry that the sum paid on 1 July 2003 did not correspond to the actual debt and that an additional TRL 1,483,874,000 (approximately EUR 900) was still due to the applicant. On 12 October 2004 the Ministry's bank transferred this sum to the bank account specified by the office responsible for the execution of judgments. However, as neither the name of the recipient nor any reference number was written on the transfer documents, the bank was unable to inform the applicant. The money was finally paid to the applicant's lawyer on 2 November 2006.